The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock
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T. S. Eliot uses irony and symbolism to capture the readers attention in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The poem has a dramatic discourse. The percipience of lifes emptiness is the main theme of the poem. Eliot exhorts the spiritual decomposition by exploring a type of life in death. T. S. Eliot, who in the Clark Lectures notes, “Real Irony is an expression of suffering”(Lobb, 53), uses irony and symbolism throughout the poem to exemplify the suffering of J. Alfred Prufrock who believes he is filled with spiritual morbidity and lack of feeling. Eliot utilizes various ironic interjections from other poets, and he uses ironic satirical rhyming phrases that fashion a sort of inane contradiction. Eliot uses many symbols to show corruption and rejection.
The utilization of ironic insertion of other poets is used to help set the tone of the poem. This originates with an epigraph from Dantes Inferno, which instills an impression of conversing with the damned, or being ensnared in some semblance of hell. This is ironic due to the message “being carried from the abyss to our ears” (Bloom, 17), symbolizing the realization of his stagnant existence. That a more prolific life exists is the advertence of Hesiods Works and Days – a description of rural life (Department of Literature). Prufrocks works and days are not deeds of heroism, but a “hundred indecisions” (32) (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol 6, 163). The “overwhelming question” is from The Pioneers by James Fenimore – a book Eliot adored since childhood (Lozano). Eliot exerts an element of parody as a type of chorus from Laforgue who wrote “In the room the women come and go/Talking of the masters of the Sienne School” (Lozano). “And indeed there will be time” (Lozano), and “squeezed the universe into a ball” (Bloom, 18), from Andrew Marvells To His Coy Mistress. From Shakespeares Twelfth Night, Eliot uses “a dying fall” (Lozano) a comparison to Hamlet and Polonius. Prufrock sees himself not like Hamlet, but like the fool who advises others (Bloom, 20). A comparison of Lazarus from the Gospels, who rose from the dead to tell a revelation (Bloom, 19).
T. S. Eliot uses women, pollution, and landscapes to symbolize corruption and rejection from his society. “In the room the women come and go”(13-14). The room captures the tediousness of high society, which is boring, and the women conversing of Michelangelo are detached (Bloom, 17-18). Prufrock feels subordinate to a man with such considerable ability, great activity and fervent grip upon life. This is the antithesis of Prufrocks passivity and accentuates the doldrum of the fashionable, shallow world Prufrock presents. Yellow fog (15) is representative of the creeping choking, atmosphere of the spiritual fog that prevails in Prufrock and his fellow men. This fog seeps within each orifice – draws him mesmerizingly into its passionless – devoid hex. Also emblematic to the etherized patient, the fog intimates the lethargic aspect of his life. Ascending a staircase in Eliots handicraft customarily intimates affectuating a spiritual labor (Gordon, 138). Prufrock is consistently a suspect of his calling and is conscious that he will “turn back and descend the stair” (39). The universe that Prufrock declaims in “Do I dare/ Disturb the Universe” (45-46) is his social life and if he were to query the “overwhelming question” (10) to one of the women, it might disturb their social clique (Gordon, 46). The recurrences of passages connote the “circulatory thought process” that leads nowhere (Bloom, 18). Prufrock is limited to uttering a confession but yearns to sing a love song. The landscapes of the poem are envisioned representations of Prufrock himself. Eliot employs varying cityscape scenarios to manifest the permeating meaninglessness and unproductiveness coursing through the souls of his peers. Ravaged, empty back streets tout the barren trials of poverty while cheap hotels (6) and low class restaurants (7) are icons of the abandonment of the human psyche and sense of ill content (Hargrove, pg. 211). These protuberate his own complicated perspective of inadequacy and weakness, as well as the spiritual desensitization and idiopathy into the environment of the dark city landscape with the simile that signifies the living death of Prufrocks existence (Hargrove, 211).
Another way that T. S. Eliot shows personal and social rejection is by the use of insignificant objects and body parts. “I have measured my life out in coffee spoons”(51), signifies the tediousness of his life mongermane reveries, as well as, his lack of achievement (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol 55 351). Prufrock is fearful he is becoming old, bitter and devoid of happiness. Eliot uses subordinate objects such as coffee spoons and cigarette butts to “suggest the triviality of his existence” (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 55, 350). The repetition of the word “time” suggests that Prufrock is bored due to an overabundance on his hands (Bloom, 18). Consequently he dons a necktie and clothing that appear to constrain him as he grooms to attend this tea party in hopes of one day asking the question. J. Alfred Prufrock is an extremely ill-at-ease man who worries that the women will not determine him desirable with his spindly arms and balding head (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol 3, 136). His heightened ability of introspection and aggregate of anguish is the very attribute that effectuates his dissimilarity from his peers. His comprehension of age and social status cripple him. He is despotized with the “eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase” (56). These eyes impugn the worth of his emotional existence and he is incapable of fleeing their meticulous examination (Bush, 11). Prufrock is apprehensive that the women will not find him attractive due to his appearance. He views himself as an insignificant insect and senses that the cold, cruel and impersonal eyes of the women, who do not want their patterned lives disturbed, would dissect him. Prufrock espying the women, “braceleted and white and bare” (63), has antagonized the insurrection of his suppressed life, and their “pillowed heads” pressure the strife of his splintered, sundered selves to the extent of critical mass (Bush, pg. 11). He conjures images of body parts, which imply the human shapes he beholds are similarly composed, removed from a perception of completeness, and thereby inane (Bloom, pg 18). Eliots value of women in an altogether divergent manner from their appearances as an apperception of sin is reflected in Prufrocks distrust and lack of faith in women (Gordon, 76). Prufrock languishes over the contingency